In January of 1963, Rev. Edwin "Ed" King returned to his home state of Mississippi, where he was born in 1936, and became the chaplain at Tougaloo College during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

Quotes from interviews with this actor are listed below. To see excerpts from interview transcripts, click on the associated Excerpts link below each quote.

"[Medgar Evers] said, 'you have to come back and there is a vacancy right here, the chaplain left... You have to come back because we need you, because this is your calling.'"

"...so we systematically organized church visits... that idea was never to crash your way into a white church, but that maybe when people saw the contradiction of turning blacks away from a church, they would have to wrestle with their conscience."

"They were beginning to burn churches. They were beginning to move beyond crosses… They burned churches because they understood that the Christian faith was what inspired the movement and kept it going."

"...they turned to cynicism and despair and turned to militancy... None of us realized how strong the evil was that we fought, and how much a part of American power it was, and so were not able to grapple [with] it..."

"I believe strictly in Christianity and those things have kept us going all these years praying for hope, that now we began to see this as a reality. And I don't think our prayer was in vain."
—Fannie Lou Hamer

"They were beginning to burn churches. They were beginning to move beyond crosses… They burned churches because they understood that the Christian faith was what inspired the movement and kept it going."
—Ed King

"…if you had an alteration with a white person who was trailing you or whatever or giving you the finger; he's not gonna do anything right then; he's gonna go home and organize and then come get you."
—Cleveland Sellers

"...I think many of us that got caught up in the Civil Rights Movement saw it as participating, saw it as an extension of our religious faith, saw it as part of our religious conviction, part of our very being."
—John Lewis

"...somehow the language of everyday people has to connect with this theological language. So when I started to think about what to talk about, I decided to make an effort to use the language of the ocean, the everyday language of everyday people. "
—Bob Moses

"And I said to my wife, I said 'Honey, if we gonna make it different in Menden Hall... We’re gonna have to stay in town long enough that we can... help them get a love for God, a love for themselves, and a love for the community.'"
—John Perkins

"...they turned to cynicism and despair and turned to militancy... None of us realized how strong the evil was that we fought, and how much a part of American power it was, and so were not able to grapple [with] it..."
—Ed King